“Oh, there will certainly be something else nice to say about it,” said Anne easily.  “There always is about a baby.”

The baby was pretty, however, and Mr. White felt that he got his five dollars’ worth of the girls’ honest delight over the plump little newcomer.  But that was the first, last, and only time that Lorenzo White ever subscribed to anything.

Anne, tired as she was, made one more effort for the public weal that night, slipping over the fields to interview Mr. Harrison, who was as usual smoking his pipe on the veranda with Ginger beside him.  Strickly speaking he was on the Carmody road; but Jane and Gertie, who were not acquainted with him save by doubtful report, had nervously begged Anne to canvass him.

Mr. Harrison, however, flatly refused to subscribe a cent, and all Anne’s wiles were in vain.

“But I thought you approved of our society, Mr. Harrison,” she mourned.

“So I do . . . so I do . . . but my approval doesn’t go as deep as my pocket, Anne.”

“A few more experiences such as I have had today would make me as much of a pessimist as Miss Eliza Andrews,” Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror at bedtime.

VII

The Pointing of Duty

Anne leaned back in her chair one mild October evening and sighed.  She was sitting at a table covered with text books and exercises, but the closely written sheets of paper before her had no apparent connection with studies or school work.

“What is the matter?” asked Gilbert, who had arrived at the open kitchen door just in time to hear the sigh.

Anne colored, and thrust her writing out of sight under some school compositions.

“Nothing very dreadful.  I was just trying to write out some of my thoughts, as Professor Hamilton advised me, but I couldn’t get them to please me.  They seem so still and foolish directly they’re written down on white paper with black ink.  Fancies are like shadows . . . you can’t cage them, they’re such wayward, dancing things.  But perhaps I’ll learn the secret some day if I keep on trying.  I haven’t a great many spare moments, you know.  By the time I finish correcting school exercises and compositions, I don’t always feel like writing any of my own.”

“You are getting on splendidly in school, Anne.  All the children like you,” said Gilbert, sitting down on the stone step.

“No, not all.  Anthony Pye doesn’t and won’t like me.  What is worse, he doesn’t respect me . . . no, he doesn’t.  He simply holds me in contempt and I don’t mind confessing to you that it worries me miserably.  It isn’t that he is so very bad . . . he is only rather mischievous, but no worse than some of the others.  He seldom disobeys me; but he obeys with a scornful air of toleration as if it wasn’t worthwhile disputing the point or he would . . . and it has a bad effect on the others.  I’ve tried every way to win him but I’m beginning to fear I never shall.  I want to, for he’s rather a cute little lad, if he is a Pye, and I could like him if he’d let me.”